MIT professor and LilyPad Arduino creator Leah Buechley writes in:

Nathan Seidle, the founder & CEO of SparkFun Electronics, is giving a talk this coming Monday about the history of SparkFun. If you’re interested in starting a business with $0 of investment capital, building a profitable company around open-source technology, designing electronics for manufacturability, or getting your favorite part sold on SparkFun, come join the discussion!

This talk will describe how SparkFun grew from a one man operation, run out of an electrical engineering student’s undergraduate dorm room, into one of the largest companies in Colorado, and along the way enabled engineers, designers, students and hobbyists to build new kinds of electronics. The talk will walk through pitfalls and triumphs, and discuss the creative, technical, and social philosophies underlying the company.

Nathan Seidle is CEO of SparkFun Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, a company he founded in 2003 as an undergraduate student in electrical engineering. The company, which has grown to over 80 employees, provides tools, hardware, and other resources for artists, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists to “play with cool electronic gadgetry”. He is an accomplished engineer, innovator, and bootstrapping entrepreneur.

If you’re in the Boston area, definitely check it out!

Nathan Seidle at MIT
Monday, March 29 at 5:30pm
Room 32-155, Stata center at MIT
Cambridge, MA

Here’s where to find the portrait above.